Preface

This paper deals with the English rejection of
the Gregorian calendar in 1583, seeking to set this
episode in its cultural, political and intellectual
context. It concentrates particularly upon the work of
John Dee, whose treatise of advice to the queen on the
calendar reform is almost the only one of his major
writings which has not (as far as I am aware) been studied
in any depth in published writings. I argue that Dee's
calendar treatise offers important insights into his
natural philosophy and provides the keystone of his vision
of empire.

A version of this paper was presented on 29 February 1996 to the
history seminar at the University of York, and I am
grateful for the comments received there. It is now a
draft section of a book for UCL Press provisionally
entitled Time's Alteration: Calendar Reform in Early Modern England, which will deal
with the episode more fully. I will be pleased to receive comments and
references of every kind.

John Dee and the English Calendar:Science, Religion and Empire

The Gregorian reform of the calendar is familiar to
historians of the early modern period, if only through
those little notes that precede almost every work on the
period advising the reader about the conventions used in
old style and new style dating. The bare outline of it is
this. The calendar of the Roman empire — the Julian
calendar — had been adopted by the Christian church at the
council of Nicaea in AD 325, the first of the general
councils of the church. The aim was to ensure that all
Christians observe Easter at the same time, and thus to
provide a basic unity in the church. Unfortunately the
Julian measure of the year was eleven minutes too long,
which error had accumulated by the sixteenth century to
ten days. The lunar cycle used to determine the date of
the full moon upon which Easter depended was also slightly
wrong. These errors had been known about for centuries;
indeed, Copernicus's De Revolutionibus (1543) had
started out as a contribution to the project of calendar
reform. The issue was only tackled, however, towards the
end of the counter-reformation council of Trent, which may
have had in mind a project similar to that of Nicaea:
bringing a basic unity to a divided church on the basis of
common observance of Christian festivals. The reform was
propogated as a papal bull in 1582, which did three
things: it introduced a new method of calculating Easter;
it removed ten days from October 1582 to bring the
calendar back to the same relation with the movements of
the heavens which it had had at the time of Nicaea; and it modified the system of leap years to keep it there.[1]

The Gregorian calendar was accepted throughout the Roman
catholic world, though usually at a different time than
that envisaged in the papal bull and by civil decree.
Most protestant countries rejected it, as they rejected
the authority of the church of Rome. There was
considerable controversy over the new calendar, and in
lands where protestants and catholics were intermingled it
caused great trouble; Bohemia's "kalenderstreit" was
notorious. Some of the problems became known to English
diplomats and privy counsellors, particularly secretary of
state Walsingham, who received a copy of the bull in
diplomatic correspondence.[2] Walsingham passed a copy of
the papal bull and calendar to the court magus, John Dee,
and asked him, on behalf of the privy council, for his
opinion. What is interesting about the episode that
followed is not that England (predictably) rejected the
Gregorian reform, but rather how close she came to
adopting it, and in particular the appeal which a
distinctively English version of the calendar reform had
in a period when both the identity of the Church of
England and of the nascent British empire were beginning
to be articulated.

Dee was the obvious choice as advisor. One of the leading
scientific figures in England, and possessed of one of the
largest private libraries in the country, he had a command
of the latest astronomical learning (Copernicus included)
as well as of current antiquarian and historical writing,
both necessary for an understanding of the calendar issue.
Dee was also a long-time associate of the Elizabethan
regime. He had been imprisoned under Mary, had given
astrological advice as to the date of the queen's
coronation, had acted as agent for Walsingham, and with
him was among the advocates of a "blue water" foreign
policy combining protestant alliances with voyages of
exploration and colonization.[3]

Dee clearly regarded the request as important, for he
dropped everything to work on the problem and on 26
February delivered to Lord Treasurer Burghley a 62-page
illuminated treatise, entitled: A playne Discourse and
humble Advise for our Gratious Queen Elizabeth, her most
Excellent Majestie to peruse and consider, as concerning
the needful Reformation of the Vulgar Kalendar for the
civile years and daies accompting, or verifyeng, according
to the time truely spent.[4]

The Playne discourse had
two parts: one scientific, one polemical. Dee began by
explaining how the motions of the solar system were
translated into the "vulgar kalendar". He compared the
figures given for the length of the year by a number of
astronomers from classical to modern times, finishing with
Copernicus and the protestant Michael Maestlin, a strong
critic of the Gregorian reform.[5] He concluded that the
calendar had indeed slipped out of line by ten days since
the time of the council of Nicaea, but more to the point
that it had slipped by eleven days since the time of
Christ. In the polemical section which followed the
astronomical analysis, Dee developed this line of
argument.

The Romanists have done verie imperfectly, in chosing and
preferring the time of Nicene Councell, to be the
principal marke, and foundation of reforming the Kalendar:
Although that Nicene Councell ... ought chiefly of all
Christians to be regarded & kept in memorie... Christians
should regard his [Christ's] birth as the "Radix of Time"
...

An eleven-day alteration, to the time of Christ, rather
than a ten-day alteration to the time of Nicaea, was
needed, concluded Dee. This would best be done not in a
single leap, as the pope proposed, but by deducting the
eleven days in batches of two or three from the ends of
the months May to September 1583, which would both
minimize any disruption to contracts and covenants and
avoid affecting the nominal date of any religious festival
or of the Trinity legal term. The royal authority, he
argued, was quite sufficient to alter the civil
calendar.[6] England would be out of step with much of
the continent but, insisted Dee, "the Gregorian
negligence" was to blame for this, "not any our affected
singularity, or insufficiency". England's difference
could be turned to advantage. The queen, recommended Dee,
should publish a special calendar for 1583, the "Annus
Reformationis", followed in 1584 by a "Queen Elizabeth's
perpetual Kalendar" for the next century or two
accompanied by an appeal to all other countries to follow
England's lead. Thus, before the Gregorian reform had
widely taken root, England would lead a sort of protestant
counter-reformation of the calendar whose patent
truthfulness would in the end oblige even the pope to
"embrace the veritie".

Burghley perused the treatise and was "inclined to think
him in the right line" having proved his point "by a great
number of good authorities, such as I think the Romanists
cannot denie". Visiting Dee, he persuaded him to concede
one crucial point:

He yeldeth for conformitye with the rest of the world to
assent to the reformation of our Engleshe calender, with
the abridgement of x. daies onelie; so as the trewthe be
denounced to the world that yt ought to be xj. dayes,
hoping the trewthe will drawe the Romanestes and other
partes of Christendome to take owt of their Calender
hereafter the said odd daie.

Dee consented to let the matter be referred "by hir
Majesties order to sum skilful men in this science, as Mr.
Digges and others, to be called owt of the Universities".
Burghley added that it was urgent, "for that it is
requisite, for a secrett matter, to be reformed before
November".[7]

Those consulted had impeccable protestant and Copernican
credentials: Thomas Digges (also a former pupil of Dee
and well known to Burghley); [8] Henry Savile, founder-to
be of Oxford's Savilean chairs of astronomy and geometry;
[9] and "Mr Chambers", a progressive astronomer.[10] The
scientists (claimed Burghely) agreed with Dee that eleven
days would have been "the better reformation" but pointed
out that the Gregorian reform was at least accurate to the
time of the council of Nicea, "and therefore to accord the
better with all countries adjacent that have received that
reformation of subtracting ten days only, they think it
may be assented unto, without any manifest error". Dee
accordingly (but grudgingly) revised his almanac for 1583
to omit ten (rather than eleven) days from the months May
to September 1583, "without changing of any feast or
holiday moveable or fixed, or without altering of the
course of Trinity Term".[11]

The judges also proved favourable to the reform, seeing no
problems for the complicated legal calendar, but the
Church proved to be a stumbling block. Archbishop Grindal
was ordered to consult quickly with his colleagues, but
the bishops dragged their feet and had to be chivvied;
their eventual reply was destructive.[12] The delay was
excused on the grounds that so weighty a matter required
"mature and deliberate consultation" both with convocation
and with protestant churches abroad, lest "we should offer
just occasion of schisme ... by allowing, though not
openly yet indirectly, the Pope's dewyse and the
[Tridentine] counsayle". The reply was collectively
signed by Grindal and bishops Aylmer, Piers and Young,
enclosing also "the judgement of some godly learned in the
mathematicalls". The main objection was simple: "Seeing
that the Bishop of Rome is Antichrist, therefore we may
not communicate with him in any thing". It was the duty
of the reformed churches actively to distance themselves
from the church of Rome. There was also the salient point
that the 1571 bull excommunicating and threatening the
life of the queen was still current. To conform to a bull
on calendar reform issued "under payne of excommunication"
would signal fear of the pope "and so confirme the Papists
and offend the weak brethren". But if the pope had no
authority to reform the calendar, who did? The bishops
readily acknowledged Walsingham's statement that it was a
"mixed civil and ecclesiastical matter". If it were to be
introduced in England, then Convocation would have to be
consulted; and since alteration of the Book of Common
Prayer was necessary parliament would have to be involved
as well. On top of the risk of schism at home, there was
a further risk of schism with protestant churches in other
countries who would also have to be consulted.

The bishops' objections ranged over other issues too, such
as the necessity or otherwise of exact observance of feast
days, whether the issue of the calendar was important
enough to justify the religious strife it would cause, and
the practicalities of reform. The council nonetheless
pushed on and drew up a proclamation which sought to
counter their objections.[13] The convenience of the
reform for trade and diplomacy were emphasised. Although
it was recognised that the reform was only to the time of
Nicaea and not that of Christ, it was pointed out that the
Council of Nicaea was held in the highest regard by the
Church of England, not least because it had been presided
over by a Christian emperor, Constantine. The
proclamation, however, was not published. This may have
been meant simply as a tactical retreat, for in the
parliament of 1584-5 there was introduced "An Act, giving
Her Majesty authority to alter and make a calendar,
according to the calendar used in other countries".
However, it got no further than the Lords and was lost in
the dissolution.[14] The measure accompanied an attack
led by Leicester on the powers of the bishops, but in
other respects the session was a bad one for such a
measure, for it was concerned mainly to safeguard the
safety of the queen against the threat posed by another
papal bull, the 1571 bull of excommunication. There was
not to be another serious attempt to reform the calendar
in England until 1699, and no successful one until 1752.
England, amongst the protestant countries most favourable
to the original Gregorian reform, was to be one of the
last to accept it.

It is easy to see why the Gregorian reform was
unacceptable to the Church of England. It is more
difficult to see why the privy council was so keen to push
ahead with it. There is no room for detailed speculation
here, but the possible explanations include the obvious
attraction of simplifying diplomatic correspondence
(particularly with the English troops in the Netherlands,
which had adopted the new calendar), and the desire to
assert civil authority in this "mixed civil and
ecclesiastical area" against the bishops. There may also
have been another, unspoken reason. At the same time as
the calendar issue was being considered, Burghley's anti-catholic polemic The Execution of Justice in England was
being published; the first edition appeared on 17 December
1582, and a revised version on 14 January 1583. It was
Burghley's counter-attack against those Roman catholic
apologists who denounced the execution of priests as a
heresy-hunt. Not so, insisted Burghley: the priests were
executed for treason, not heresy; it was what they did,
not who they were, that brought retribution. He
underlined his point with the statement that "Christian
kings, for some respects in policy, can endure the Pope to
command where no harm nor disadvantage groweth to
themselves".[15] What better way, at the height of the
controversy, to demonstrate this point than by adopting
the Gregorian calendar, duly tested for correctness by
English scientists? Burghley's persistence in persuading
Dee to recommend in favour of the new calendar acquire new
point. A public demonstration that England was prepared
to accept some things that came from Rome would have
underlined the particular reasons for rejecting the rest.
It would have shown that England was a nation closed to
treason but open to reason, a nation persecuted rather
than a nation of persecutors.

Neither can the bishops' stance be seen in terms of simple
anti-popery, as has usually been the case. Their
arguments were to a great extent about the nature of
religious authority: of the status of general councils,
of the church fathers, of convocation, and even of the
papacy. These were the not concerns of Bible-thumping
puritanism but rather of nascent anglicanism. It will not
do to see the English rejection of the Gregorian calendar
in 1583 as a straightforward case of anti-popish zealotry
prevailing over more moderate councils. The key issue was
whether the calendar was seen as a religious or a civil
matter. The whole range of opinion on the bishops' bench,
from the puritan sympathizer Grindal to the anti-puritan
Aylmer, was against the reform. The whole range of
opinion on the secular side was for the reform. The
dividing line on the issue of calendar reform lay not
between England and Rome but within England, between
church and state. As long as there was major disagreement
over whether the calendar was a religious or a civil — or,
indeed, a scientific — issue, it was unlikely to be
reformed.

One player in the debate, however, saw the
calendar in a different context from everyone else: John
Dee. His work merits special consideration.
Dee's treatise on the calendar has had a poor press.
Hoskin simply records it as a "favourable verdict" on the
Gregorian reform.[16] For North, Dee's astronomy is
second-hand and inferior, his treatise "a pale shadow of
the Gregorian recommendations", his outlook "excessively
insular", his emphasis on the time of Christ rather than
the time of Nicaea merely "a very refined form of
nationalism", vitiated by willingness "to compromise with
Rome" when pressed.[17] Dee's biographers have duly
noted the calendar episode but have not followed it up,
and this despite the exhaustive attention paid to his
mystical obscurities and his marginalia.[18] Understood
in context, however, it emerges as the culmination of
decades of better-known work on the history and future of
the "Brytish empire", and as Dee's last attempt to gain
recognition and patronage for his ideas in England before
leaving for the continent.

The part of Dee's Playne discourse which deals with the
astronomical arguments is not the most significant part,
and Dee did not pretend to any special expertise in this
area. As we have seen, he was content to acknowledge that
the Gregorian measure of the year was a good enough
approximation upon which to base the vulgar calendar for
millenia to come. For Dee, as for the Gregorian
reformers, correct observations were an essential tool for
calendar reform, but they did not on their own dictate a
solution. Dee rejected the Gregorian calendar because it
started from the wrong base, from the time of the first
general council of the Christian church rather than from
the time of Christ. Between the pope's ten-day reform and
Dee's eleven-day one lay a great theological divide. Like
the council of Trent, Dee saw calendar reform as part of a
much wider agenda. It is this wider vision which is dealt
with in the all-important appendix to the Playne
discourse.[19]

The appendix contains Dee's case for an Elizabethan
protestant reform of the calendar, and finishes with a
formal petition to the queen to adopt it. The widest
perspective is revealed in the concluding poem, which is
worth considering in full.

As Caesar and Sosigenes,
The vulgar kalendar did make,
So Caesar's Pere, our true Empress,
To Dee this work she did betake.
To finde the Dayes superfluous,
(which Caesar's false Hypothesis,
Had bred; to Nature, odious:)
Wherein, he found eleven amyss.
For he, from Christ, Chief Root of time
The time did try, by heavenly wit:
No Councell dan deme this a crime
From CHRIST, to us, tear time to fit.
ELIZABETH our Empress bright,
Who in the yere of eighty three,
Thus made the truth to come to light,
And civile yere with heaven agree.
But eighty foure, the Pattern is
Of Christ's birth yere: and so for ay
Eche Bissext shall fall little mys,
To shew the sun of Christ birth day.
Three hundred yeres, shall not remove
The sun, one day, from this new match:
Nature, no more shall us reprove
Her golden tyme, so yll to watch.
The God of might, our father dere,
Whose rayng no tyme can comprehend,
Good time our Elizabeth grant here
And Bliss aeternall, at her ende.
Amen

The theme of the poem is that of restoring earthly affairs
to an original harmony. This happens in several different
ways; there are, in all, seven restorations proposed in
Dee's short poem, and it will be useful to treat them one
by one.

Dee's first restoration is that of the calendar to its
position at the time of Christ. He writes here of
"Christ, chief root of time", and elsewhere in the
treatise of Christ's birth as "the 'Radix of Time'". The
reference to "the sun of Christ birth day" indicates that
Dee regarded this as of astrological significance. Dee
had gone so far in his as to calculate that Christ was
born in a leap year ("bissext"), and one suspects that he
had been indulging in the illegal practice of casting the
horoscope of the son of God. Dee saw religious truth and
arcane science as aspects of the same revelation, and it
was essential to maintain a common framework for both; the
calendar was part of this framework.

Secondly, restoring the calendar to its position at the
time of Christ had close parallels with the protestant
mission to return christianity to its roots. Dee says
relatively little about this, for he was concerned with
the general principle of primitive simplicity rather than
with the detailed debates about the character of the early
church which preoccupied ecclesiastical writers.

Nonetheless, his aim is made clear enough in the lines:
"No Councell can deme this a crime/From CHRIST, to us,
tear time to fit". Elsewhere in the polemical appendix,
he declares in favour of "The incomparable excellence of
the TRINITIE COUNCEL above Nicene Councel". The christian
calendar was to go back to basics.

Dee's third restoration was of the unity of Christendom.
Dee's anti-popery was limited and conditional. The pope
had not created the faulty Julian calendar, and his
attempt to reform it had been genuine but misguided. Dee
believed that once the reformed English calendar had, by
virtue of its inherent superiority, been widely adopted,
in the end even the pope would have to "embrace the
veritie". In this sense, Dee shared the Gregorian (even
Tridentine) vision of a basic level of Christian unity
being achieved on the basis of a common calendar, based on
rational agreement. This in turn was linked to Dee's
vision (discussed below) of a new "Brytish empire"
spreading "with the intention of setting forth the glory
of Christ" throughout the northern hemisphere.[20] More
widely, French has argued that Dee believed
protestant/catholic unity was possible, but that it would
happen on the basis of a higher philosophical unity.
Mathematics was one of the elements of this higher unity,
for it was a way of achieving links with God through
numbers.[21] The Copernican system was one expression of
this higher unity; the truly reformed calendar was
another. Dee's own religious ideas were centred around
the ambition to achieve a unity of religious and
philosophical knowledge in a single scheme of creation.
Included within this scheme was, French has argued, an
ambition to reunite the catholic and protestant faiths.
What better first step for all of this than to revive the
Nicean project for a common calendar, on the basis of
mutually accepted astronomical reasoning?

This leads us to Dee's fourth restoration: that of the
correspondence of the civil and natural years, and by
extension of the earthly order to that of the heavens.
The theme is clear enough in the poem. The Julian error
is "to Nature, odious". When it is corrected, "Nature, no
more shall us reprove/Her golden tyme, so yll to watch".
This theme of harmony between the civil and natural orders
suffuses Dee's work. In The Mathematical Preface
(1570), Dee had divided creation into the terrestrial
world, which consisted of things physical, and the
heavenly world, which consisted of things transcendent;
number and mathematics occupied an intermediate place,
being at once both definite and intangible. Numbering
thus held the key to creation.[22] Dee quoted the
nineteenth psalm: "The Heauens declare the glory of God,
and the Firmament sheweth forth the workes of his handes".
He went on:

Astronomie, was to us, from the beginning, commended, and
in maner commaunded by God him selfe. In asmuch as he
made the Sonne, Mone, and Sterres, to be to us, for
Signes, and knowledge of Seasons, and for Distinctions of
Dayes, and yeares ... without great diligence of
Observation, examination and Calculation, their periods
and courses (whereby Distinctions of Seasons, yeares, and
New Mones might precisely be knowne) could not exactly be
certified. Which thing to performe, is that Art, which we
have Defined to be Astronomie. Wherby, we may haue the
distinct Course of Times, dayes, yeares, and Ages: aswell
for Consideration of Sacred Prophesies, accomplished in
due time, foretold: as for high Mysticall Solemnities
holding: And for all other humaine affaires, Conditions,
and couenantes, upon certaine time, betwene man and man:
with many other great uses. Wherin, (verely), would be
great incertainty.[23]

The reference is to Genesis 1.14: "And God said, Let there
be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day
from the night; and let them be for signs, and for
seasons, and for days, and years". The stress on "signes"
betokened Dee's commitment to astrology, another
discipline requiring an accurate calendar. The whole
Mathematicall Praeface, indeed, was a manifesto for the
practical value of mathematics in all areas of life:
mechanics, manufacture, music, navigation, and much else.
The aim was to achieve "Natural and heavenly
Concordances".[24] Correct numbering and measurement, in
short, were the way for humanity to achieve not only
correct knowledge of the divine order but also the right
management and exploitation of the world in accordance
with divine wishes. In an unpublished work of 1570,
Brytannicae Republicae Synopsis, Dee had written of the
duty of human intelligence to discover and reconcile
earthly and heavenly wisdom. Laws, for example, "ought to
be ordred to gither in a Body Methodicall: and not to be a
Confused Chaos (and Worse) as they are", while a soundly
based currency was essential to prosperity.[25] The
calendar was a perfect instance of a mathematically
correct framework as the key to harmony between the earth
and the heavens, between the human and natural worlds.

The reference in the title of the Playne Discourse to
"accompting, or verifyeng" posits an identity between
numbering and truth. The force thus becomes apparent of
Dee's claim that his calendar reform "Thus made the truth
to come to light,/And civile yere with heaven agree".
The reformed calendar would have played a significant part
in what Seymour has called "a British duty to bring order
to a savage world".[26] Here lies Dee's fifth
restoration: of Britain to her historic imperial role,
under (as the verse has it) "Elizabeth, our Empress
bright". All Christendom, Dee believed, would follow
"Queen Elizabeth's perpetual calendar", to the advantage
of international trade. This would be a matter of more
than mere harmony, however. Dee had carefully adjusted
his calculations of Christ's birth from the meridian of
Bethlehem to that of London, so that "a marvelous
Concordance (to our great Confort) may hereafter appear of
the like places of the Sun orderly at the London
Meridian".[27] This was not merely a protestant or an
Elizabethan calendar; it was an imperial calendar. For
the full significance of this aspect of Dee's treatise,
which is present as an overarching assumption, we need to
look at Dee's historical writings in the preceding years.

Dee has been credited with the popularisation, and one of
the earliest uses, of the term "British empire". This was
well before the union of the crowns of England and
Scotland gave the term "British" its modern use; Dee's
Britain was the ancient Britain of Arthur, straddling
England and Wales. Dee had close contacts with the
leading antiquaries of his day. He followed Polydore
Vergil in seeing Britain's founding in the landing of
Brutus after the Trojan wars. Arthur was the restorer of
this ancient empire of Britain, and this empire had in
turn devolved by descent upon Elizabeth. Dee and the
Tudors shared Welsh origins, and were distantly related to
each other and to Arthur; Dee, appropriately enough,
believed himself to be related to the thirteenth-century
friar Roger Bacon, whom he dubbed "David Dee of Radik",
and who had long ago called upon the pope of the day to
reform the calendar and whose views on the divine
significance of numbering would have been familiar to Dee.

In 1576-8 Dee had published a four-volume work under the
general title of The Brytish Monarchie, in which he
elaborated his imperial case.[28] The well-known
frontispiece to the volume on The Art of Navigation
(1577) carried an image of the "Imperiall Ship" of
Christendom, carrying the Empress Elizabeth on a mission
to restore her empire through sea power. The same work
carried extensive hydrographical tables, entitled "The
Brytish Queene Elizabeth, Her Tables Gubernautik", an idea
prefiguring "Queen Elizabeth's perpetual calendar".
Historical recovery, geographical expansion and
mathematical advance went hand in hand. He followed this
four-volume work by drawing up for the queen her "Titles
to far lands", two manuscript rolls setting out her
descent and title to the empires of Brutus and Arthur.

Dee at this period was personally involved in a number of
schemes for exploration and recovery, supplying both
navigational advice and an ideological rationale.[29] He
aided Gilbert's plans to colonise north America and (Dee
hoped) evangelize the natives; Gilbert, indeed, had ceded
to him for his trouble all land beyond 55 degrees north
(roughly speaking, Canada). He had advised, too, on
Drake's circumnavigation; indeed, Drake's return with news
of "New Albion" may have inspired his Titles to Far
Lands. At the same time as he was working on his
calendar treatise, Dee was advising Adrian Gilbert on
further explorations. Indeed, when Walsingham dropped by
on 23 January 1583 to (we may surmise) retrieve his copy
of the papal bull reforming the calendar, he found Dee and
Adrian Gilbert mulling over plans for a north-west
passage, and joined in with the discussion, which was
continued over the following days and weeks.[30]

Dee, in summary, foresaw "an Incomparable Ilandish
monarchy" over "all the northern Ilands" (in practice,
virtually the entire hemisphere): in a phrase pregnant
with meaning, "a Cosmographicall Reformation".[31]
"Cosmographie", the mapping of the world, had featured in
Dee's Mathematicall Praeface as an art which "matcheth
Heauen, and the Earth, in one frame, and aptly applieth
parts Correspondent: So, as the Heauenly Globe, may (in
practise) be duely described upon the Geographicall, and
Hydrographicall Globe".[32] As Sherman puts it, "no-one
went so far as Dee in combining geometrical symmetry,
divine will, and the royal person to justify England's
nascent maritime empire".[33] The keystone of this whole
enterprise was Dee's "a new and correct Elizabethan
calendar", anchored on the London meridian. It was his
faith in the British empire as much as his faith in the
protestant religion which led him to believe that the
Elizabethan calendar would in time be adopted everywhere.

Dee's sixth restoration was that of control of the
calendar, out of the hands of the bishop of Rome and into
those of a christian empress, successor and imitator of
Constantine. The Julian calendar was "Caesar's false
hypothesis", to be corrected by "Caesar's Pere, our true
Empress" Elizabeth. The message was obvious to a careful
reader: Caesar, a secular dictator, had instituted a false
calendar; pope Gregory, a religious dictator, had reformed
it badly; Elizabeth, a just Christian prince, would
restore the true calendar, balancing earthly and heavenly
imperatives in her policy as she harmonized civil and
religious authority in her person. Their respective
methods of calendar reform carried a similar message:
Caesar had imposed his calendar by means of an "annus
confusionis" of 446 days; the pope had introduced his with
a similarly dictatorial and disruptive removal of ten days
all at once; Elizabeth's calendar reform was to be
introduced gradually and gently in a true "annus
reformationis", by shortening the months from May to
September in a way which would hardly be felt. And
whereas Caesar and Gregory had proceded by dictat, she
would proceed constitutionally, grounding the reform in
the royal prerogative, and appealing on grounds of truth
alone to other princes to follow suit.

There are links to be made here with Dee's wider concerns,
which have been traced by Frances Yates. Foxe and Jewel
had proclaimed an English protestant tradition in which
Elizabeth was seen as the successor of Constantine. In
Bishop Jewel's Apology of the Church of England (1564),
one of the foundation texts of the anglican church,
"Christian kings and good princes" are seen as the true
heirs of the Roman empire, whose functions had been
usurped by "the tyranny of the Bishops of Rome" and the
recent council of Trent.[34] Jewel's examples of
"Christian princes and good kings" were Moses, David and
Constantine, all leaders with dual civil and religious
qualifications. Constantine was a particularly happy
model for protestants: as the first Christian emperor of
Rome, proclaimed as such in York, and half-English to
boot, he had summoned and presided over the council of
Nicaea, at which British bishops had been in attendance to
see the official christian calendar formally instituted.

In Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1563), a copy of which was
placed in all parish churches alongside the Bible, an
illuminated letter "C" at the start of the word
"Constantine" contains an image of Elizabeth enthroned,
trampling the papal crown, having returned to her imperial
inheritance. The same icon appears, at the start of a
different word, in Dee's Art of Navigation (1577). Part
of it is reworked to provide a picture of Elizabeth and
her advisors aboard "the Imperiall ship" Europa in Dee's
carefully-worked allegorical frontispiece to the same
work, guided on her Christian mission by the sun, moon and
stars in the heavens.[35] Once again, the unity of Dee's
vision is striking. With the return of the calendar to
its root at the birth of Christ, under the aegis of
Constantine's rightful successor Elizabeth, truth and
authority would be fully restored. The royal authority to
reform the calendar was the same as that for the English
reformation.

Dee's seventh and final restoration was more personal:
that of himself to his rightful place as imperial magus.
In the first verse of his poem, he explicitly compared his
role to that of Caesar's astronomer, Sosigenes, creator of
the Julian calendar:

As Caesar and Sosigenes,
The vulgar kalendar did make,
So Caesar's Pere, our true Empress,
To Dee this work she did betake.

Dee had big ideas about himself. As he later claimed,
somewhat bitterly, "I might have served five Christian
emperors".[36] In the 1577 preface to the Art of
Navigation, writing of himself in the third person, Dee
lamented that "yf ... he had found a constant and
assistant CHRISTIAN ALEXANDER, BRYTAN should not haue bin
now destitute of a CHRISTIAN ARISTOTLE". He referred
pointedly to "this BRYTISH MONARCHIE" and to himself as
'this BRYTISH PHILOSOPHER".[37] It may (Seymour suggests)
have been Dee whom Bacon had in mind in 1589 when he had a
character in a play announce: "I will strengthen England
with my skill".[38] Elizabeth had in fact been "Dee's
most consistent patron", and she had visited his house on
a number of occasions, invited him to court to present his
scrolls of her titles to foreign lands, and generally
flattered and offered judicious flattery and
encouragement. Dee had for long neglected to preface his
works with fulsome dedications, and may (as Clulee
suggests) have come to see this as one reason for his
failure to secure adequate patronage, but he remedied this
in 1583. The treatise on the calendar which he produced
was much more than the simple advice for which he had been
asked. It was carefully inscribed and bore an illuminated
device. While it began with a decent enough dedication to
Burghley, it ended with a poem and a formal petition to
the queen to proclaim "Queen Elizabeth's perpetual
calendar" to the world. It marked the apex of his courtly
ambitions, the moment when Dee saw his last and best
chance to link his name in calendrical perpetuity with
that of the successor of Caesar and Constantine, and to
become the philosopher-general of the Christian world.

Dee's attempt to gain patronage through the calendar
treatise, however, backfired. Six years before, in 1576,
the queen had at last agreed to allow Dee the secure
income he had sought for so long: the lord chancellor
informed the archbishop of Canterbury that the queen
wanted Dee to have the livings of two rectories, worth
around £1,000 a year. It was 1582 before Grindal got
round to granting them. Dee explained the fate of this
belated transaction in his autobiography: "When I should have followed the getting out of the greate
seal unto it, I was wholly imployed (at her Majestie's and
the right honourable the Privy Counsellours, their
commandment) about the Reformation of the Kalender. Which
office anciently did appertaine to the bishops. . . as
also I had small thankes at their handes anyway, nay,
great hindrance ..."[39]

Dee, in short, was so busy on his Playne discourse
that he forgot to get the grant sealed, and lost it.
Financial injury had been added to the insult of rejection
of his proposals. It is not surprising that he soon gave
up hope of achieving due patronage and recognition in
England. Dee had been conversing with angels since
November 1581. When in May 1583, a month after the
calendar debacle, Count Laski arrived to take an interest
in these occult activities, Dee must have been receptive
to his attentions; in September he left for Poland with
Laski, with the promise of better rewards than he had
gained at home.

We may speculate on Dee's chances of success with his
original proposal. Would the bishops have rejected Dee's
eleven-day reform, with its cleverly-conceived opportunity
for asserting the authority of the Church of England
against that of the Church of Rome? One suspects not, or
at least that their reply would have been equivocal enough
to allow Burghley room for manoeuvre, as he had manoeuvred
around Dee's particular objections. There is also
evidence that Dee's support for calendar reform of some
sort was shared by others, and that the idea of a reform
distinct from the Gregorian reform had wide appeal. We
have seen that the scientists Digges, Savile and Chambers
thought Dee's scheme "the better reformation". William
Harrison's Description of England, written as part of
Holinshed's Chronicles in 1577 and published ten years
later, identified calendar reform as a problem to be
addressed, and whilst amenable to the Gregorian version
envisaged a calendar reform with a specifically English
name and rationale.[40] A similar position was taken up by
one W. Farmer, a Dublin surgeon, who published an almanac
for England and Ireland for 1587. The almanac carried
dual Julian and Gregorian calendars, and while noting the
convenience of harmony with the continent expressed
reservation sover the Gregorian reform and urged that the
issue be referred "to the judgement of the reverent
Divines, and learned Astronomers. . . The one, in respect
of Conscience, the other in respect of the communitie of
Computation".[41] Finally, an almanac of 1591, by one
"J.D.", provided a triple calendar of old style, new style
and "true style" dates, the last corrected by thirteen
days rather than ten to bring Christmas day back to its
rightful place on the shortest day, December 21st. The
author explained that he had written it as a result of an
argument amongst a company of "worshipfull" and "learned"
men about the best means to reform the calendar.[42]

We may conclude that there was considerable potential
support for calendar reform in England in the period
surrounding the Gregorian reform; that the idea of an
independent, English calendar reform, perhaps different in
content as well as rationale from the Gregorian reform,
also had considerable support. Dee's simultaneously pro-reform and anti-papal outlook commanded considerable
respect throughout the seventeenth century; indeed, at the
time of the adoption of the Gregorian reform in England in
1750 the Biographia Britannica described Dee's treatise
as "one of his best performances", which had stood the
test of time.[43] In more favourable circumstances, Dee's
proposal would have stood a significant chance of success.
Those better circumstances came with the defeat of the
Armada. Dee's British imperial outlook was close to that
of the mainstream of English protestant culture, and the
gap closed further in 1588. In that year an engraving
"Sphaera Civitatis" was published, mixing political and
astronomical symbolism in a way that Dee would have
recognised. "Elizabeth, by the grace of God queen of
England, France and Ireland, defender of the faith"
embraces a "civic sphere" on the Copernican model, each of
the inner spheres occupied by one of seven civic virtues
with "justitia immobilis" at the centre.[44] Both the
"Armada portrait" and the "Ditchley portrait" of Elizabeth
include maps and other of the symbolic paraphernalia of
empire and expansion. Here was a moment of optimism which
might have provided more fertile ground for an English
calendar reform. Dee shared in this optimism, for he had
also had a hand in the defeat of the Spanish armada. The
story is recounted by Seymour. In 1587-8, Dee was
spreading prophecies from his base in Prague about "the
imminent fall of a mighty kingdom amid fearsome storms".
These reached the Vatican via the Emperor Rudolph, Dee's
patron, but more importantly they also reached the Dutch
almanac printers, who at this stage supplied much of the
continent with almanacs. Reprinted thus, Dee's prophesies
"significantly undermined the morale of the Spanish at a
critical moment".[45]. Dee was understandably exultant at
the news of the defeat of the Armada, and his letter to
the queen is currently on display in the British museum
manuscript galleries. Dee rejoices in the arrival of
"your Brytish Earthly Paradise". The letter comes from
Bohemia, home of the kalenderstreit, and, is dated not
"new style" or "old style" but "stylo vere".[46] Dee's
new age had arrived at last, and Dee's Elizabethan
calendar was brought out again to welcome it.

References

Place of publication is London if not stated.

1. The start of the year was taken to be 1 January; the
medieval custom of reckoning by the year of grace,
beginning on 25 March, had been discontinued in most
continental countries by this time, although it continued
in England for government purposes until 1752. The best
source on all this is: G. V. Coyne et. al. (eds),
Gregorian reform of the calendar: proceedings of the
Vatican conference to commemorate its 400th anniversary,
1582-1982 (Vatican City, 1983). On the longer history of
calendar reform in England, see R. Poole, "'Give us our
eleven days!' Calendar reform in eighteenth-century
England", Past & Present 149 (Nov. 1995), pp. 95-139.

3. The principal works on Dee used in this study are: P.
French, John Dee: the world of an Elizabethan magus
(1972), esp. chs 7-8; N. H. Clulee, John Dee's natural
philosophy (1988), esp. pp. 180-96; F. A. Yates,
Astraea: the imperial theme in the sixteenth century
(1975), esp. pp. 38-51; W. H. Sherman, John Dee: the
politics of history in the English renaissance
(Massachusets, 1995), esp. chs 5 & 7; and I. Seymour, "The
political magic of John Dee", History Today, Jan. 1989,
pp. 29-35. Clulee's work has been especially useful, and
includes a thorough bibliography of the various ms.
versions of Dee's writings on the calendar, which are not
cited in detail in this article.

4. Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1789 fos. 1-62.
Individual page references for this document will not
normally be given here.

5. M. Caspar, Kepler, 2nd edn (New York, 1993), pp. 2301.

6. In his diary on December 25th, Dee had already decided
that the correction of the calendar was "a civile
aequation, but mathematically and religiously to be
substantiated". J. O Halliwell (ed), The Private diary
of John Dee, Camden Society, xix (1842), p. 18.

7. What this matter was is not known, but the November
deadline also appeared in Dee's treatise. I welcome
suggestions. It may have had some astrological
significance, perhaps in relation to the great
conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on 28 April, which,
since previous such conjunctions had coincided with the
periods of Christ and Charlemagne, was widely expected to
bring great changes to empires and natural disasters: M.
Aston, "The fiery trigon conjunction", Isis 61 (1970),
pp. 158-87.

11. Dee's original almanac with eleven days omitted is in
Corpus Christi College, Oxford (henceforth CCC), MS. 254
fos. 162-9, and his revised ten-day version follows on
fos. 170-6.

12. The bishops' reply, together with some of the other
documents used in this paper, are collected in
Gentleman's Magazine xxxvi (1851), pp. 451-9. The
originals are in the British Library, Add. MS. 32,092,
with a copy in Add. MS. 14,291.

16. M.A. Hoskin, "The reception of the calendar", in
Coyne, Gregorian reform of the calendar, p. 256.

17. J. D. North, "The western calendar: four centuries of
discontent", ibid., pp. 102-4. North's essay is more
accessibly reprinted in his The Universal Frame (1989).

18. J. L. Heilbron, "Introduction" to John Dee on
astonomy, ed. W. Shumaker (Berkeley, 1978), p. 15;
Clulee, John Dee's natural philosophy, pp. 177-8, 288 n.
6, & bibliography; Sherman, John Dee, pp. 117-18.
Sherman's thoroughness on the latter point extends to the
deduction (p. 169) that the author of one of the
marginalia in an edition of Dee's Brytish monarchy was
clearly "someone with experience. . . of the business of
salting herrings".

19. Dee, Playne discourse, pp. 42-62.

20. Sherman, John Dee, pp. 180-5. The phrase is from a
1578 manuscript of Dee's.

21. French, John Dee, pp. 97-103, 105, 119. Dee's
treatise on the vulgar calendar did not, of course, depend
upon Copernican assumptions, but did use Copernican
observations.

42. "J. D.", A triple almanack for the yeare of our Lord
God 1591 (London, 1590). The almanac has been attributed
to John Dee, and Clulee (p. 229) supports this
attribution, but the passage quoted above does not sound
like Dee, and the "true" calendar is not Dee's original
true calendar; the British Library attributes it to one J.
Dade.

46. BL Harley MS. 6986 fol. 45, Dee to Elizabeth, "the
10th Novembre: A. Dm~: 1588 stylo vere". The item is
currently on display in the permanent display of books and
manuscripts on the ground floor of the British Museum.